{"id":9990,"date":"2021-04-20T21:05:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T01:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=9990"},"modified":"2022-01-23T13:39:11","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T18:39:11","slug":"chickamauga-battlefield-second-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/20\/chickamauga-battlefield-second-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Chickamauga Battlefield, second visit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cannon atop Snodgrass Hill, where the battle ended<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The main reason for picking Chattanooga as a destination – less than 80 miles from Cartersville GA – was to take a second look at the Chickamauga battlefield. On my first visit<\/a> I split my day between Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain. My impression of Chickamauga was… HUGE. It is a very large battlefield. I felt I needed to take another look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I spent over 3 hours there yesterday and while I reinforced my impression that the battlefield is huge I also formed an opinion of the battle itself: it was a bloody, chaotic mess. There were almost 35,000 casualties (dead, wounded or missing). While the battle was nominally a Confederate victory, the advantage was short-lived. The Union retained control of Chattanooga and, shortly, would control the entire area and use it as a base for the devastating march on Atlanta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t help but compare Chickamauga to Gettysburg. Both were multi-day battles with an ebb-and-flow over the course of the event. But while the Gettysburg battlefield has many well-defined geographical points (Seminary Ridge, Little Round Top, the Devil’s Den, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard and the broad upslope that hosted Pickett’s Charge), the Chickamauga battlefield is a lot of trees and a half dozen open fields, none of which are geographically distinct. I can imagine how hard it would have been for soldiers to orient themselves during the chaos of the battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, whereas Gettysburg’s seminal moment was a courageous (if foolhardy) charge by the Confederates that was repulsed, the seminal moment at Chickamauga was a breach of the Union line caused by miscommunication. An unforced error. Not exactly the stuff of heroism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the place reeks of history. And death. Standing in those serene fields or walking the quiet paths, it is very hard to imagine the hell of that battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few historically significant structures on the battlefield – almost certainly replicas, but accurate replicas. The Brotherton house, at the location of the Confederate breakout, is one. There is also a structure on Snodgrass Hill, where the last fighting took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have included a photo of the Brotherton field, with my truck in the distance, just to show the scale. This is just a small piece of the battlefield. Huge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brotherton house<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Snodgrass house<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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My truck, parked by the Brotherton field<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main reason for picking Chattanooga as a destination – less than 80 miles from Cartersville GA – was to take a second look at the Chickamauga battlefield. On my first visit I split my day between Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain. My impression of Chickamauga was… HUGE. It is a very large battlefield. I felt … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,39,96,4,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-ga","category-historical-markers","category-places","category-tn7"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-2B8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9990"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10895,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9990\/revisions\/10895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}